Sunday, August 26, 2012

1.When I’m writing a book I only read other
books that somehow inform my book. If it doesn’t serve my process — no matter
how much I want to read it — I don’t. I suspect there are a lot of people
who will give the opposite opinion (take a break from reading about your
subject matter, etc.), but I’m not one of them. This is your time to be
completely and justifiably obsessed. So go ahead — bask in the madness.

2.Non-fiction shouldn’t mean poorly written.
Writing is writing and art always counts. Make your book beautiful to read and
you’re more likely to communicate your messages to your reader.

3.Don’t focus on the promotional aspects of
social media. Just share your passion for the subject matter as it filters
through your writing process. The promotion aspect will be an organic
extension of your passion.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Be careful
what you make permanent. Working titles are dangerous. They can become too
familiar to us while being misleading or meaningless to potential customers.

Choices, a Teen Woman's Journal for Self-awareness and Personal Planning was a
hot seller and spawned a publishing company as a subsidiary for the Girls Club
of Santa Barbara. The company thrived but soon found that Choices could not be
used in schools unless there was a version for the boys. So the authors, Mindy
Bingham, Sandy Stryker and Judy Edmonson, wrote a matching masculine edition.

Working titles ranged from Choices II, to Choices Too, and even Son of Choices.
What sounded ridiculous or humorous in the beginning became familiar and
sounded fairly good.

Finally the three female authors settled on Changes but found that men did not
like the proposed title. After discussions with a number of men (including
Mindy's father), they agreed to change the title to Challenges, a Teen Man's
Journal for Self-awareness and Personal Planning. The female authors discovered
that while many women want a change, most men do not like change. Men prefer
challenges. http://www.academicinnovations.com

The title must be easy to remember and easy to say. It has to grab the
attention of the potential buyer and it must project an image the buyer can
relate to. Authors and publishers often argue over titles. Authors may be
closer to the subject matter and publishers may be closer to the buyers.

Authors, as a rule, are poor judges of titles and often go for the cute or
clever rather than the practical. ~ Nat Bodian, The Joy of Publishing

So far Choices has sold over one million copies and Challenges over a half
million. They are used side-by-side in many schools. A "working
title" is for the manuscript, not necessarily for the book.

Dan Poynter has written more than 100 books since 1969 including Writing
Nonfiction and The Self-Publishing Manual. He is past-chair of NSA's Writer-Publisher
PEG and the founder of the PEG newsletter.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Even if you are not a
professional writer you probably already heard about writing prompts. They
represent a very effective tool for any writing project, so it’s a good idea to
know how to use them.

What Is A Writing Prompt?

If you’re a fiction writer, you
may want to consider using writing prompts to kick-start your creativity. A
writing prompt is simply a topic around which you start jotting down ideas. The
prompt could be a single word, a short phrase, a complete paragraph or even a
picture, with the idea being to give you something to focus upon as you write.
You may stick very closely to the original prompt or you may wander off at a
tangent.

You may just come up with rough,
disjointed notes or you may end up with something more polished and complete, a
scene or even a complete story. The point is to simply start writing without
being held back by any inhibitions or doubts.

Here are four good reasons for
writing to prompts :

Sometimes it’s hard to start
writing when faced with a blank page. Focusing on an unrelated prompt for a
while helps get the creative juices flowing. If you write for just ten minutes
on a prompt, you should then find it easier to return to the piece you intended
to write. You may also find that if you stop trying to think so hard about what
you wanted to write and switch you attention to the prompt instead, the words
and ideas for your original piece start to come to you after all.

The things you write in response
to a prompt may also end up as worthwhile material in their own right. The
prompt may give you ideas from which a complete story grows or you may get
fresh ideas for another piece you are already working on. It’s often surprising
how much material you come up with once you start.

Writing to a prompt regularly
helps to get you into the habit of writing. This can act as a sort of exercise
regime, helping to build up your “muscles” so that you start to find it easier
and easier to write for longer and longer.

Prompts can be a great way to
get involved in a writing community. Sometimes writing groups offer a prompt
for everyone to write about, with the intention being for everyone to come up
with something they can then share. This can be a source of great
encouragement, although knowing that others will read what you have written can
also inhibit your creativity.

Examples of Writing Prompts

The following are twenty writing
prompts that you could use to spark your imagination. If you want to use one,
don’t worry about where the ideas take you or whether what you’ve written is
“good”. The point is just to get into the flow of writing. You can come back
later and polish if you wish to.

It was the first snowfall of the
year.

He hadn’t seen her since the day
they left High School.

The city burned, fire lighting
up the night sky.

Silk.

She studied her face in the
mirror.

The smell of freshly-cut grass.

They came back every year to lay
flowers at the spot.

The streets were deserted. Where
was everyone? Where had they all gone?

This time her boss had gone too
far.

Red eyes.

Stars blazed in the night sky.

He woke to birdsong.

‘Shh! Hear that?’ ‘I didn’t hear
anything.’

He’d always hated speaking in
public.

She woke, shivering, in the dark
of the night.

The garden was overgrown now.

He’d never noticed a door there
before.

She’d have to hitch a ride home.

‘I told him not to come back
too!’

His feet were already numb. He
should have listened.

Where To Find Writing Prompts
Online

The internet is a wonderful
source of writing prompts. There are sites dedicated to providing them which a
quick search will turn up. Examples include :

There are also many other sites
that can, inadvertently, provide a rich seam of material for writing prompts –
for example news sites with their intriguing headlines or pictorial sites such
as Flickr.com that give you access to a vast
range of photographs that can prompt your writing.

If you’re on Twitter, there are
users you can follow to receive a stream of prompts, for example :

Another idea is just to keep an
eye on all the tweets being written by people all over the world, some of which
can, inadvertently, be used as writing prompts.

How To Make Your Own Writing
Prompts

You can find ideas for writing
prompts of your own from all sorts of places : snatches of overheard
conversation, headlines, signs, words picked from a book and so on. Get used to
keeping an eye out for words and phrases that fire your imagination, jot them
down and use them as writing prompts to spark your creativity. You never know
where they might take you.

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About Me

An enthusiastic instructor and writer, I spend my time freelancing as both. I teach book writing as well as all aspects of graphic design. I love to teach and I very much enjoy writing and creating books.